300 meets Gladiator in a pitch-perfect celebration of blood, revenge, and steel-on-bone viscera. Madness? This is next-gen.

Using some of the least compelling so-called “mechanics” ever seen to tell a story that wouldn’t pass muster at an online creative writing diploma mill, Beyond is irrefutable evidence that the games-as-interactive-fiction movement is a self-indulgent pipe dream not worth pursuing.